Leah Chase has participated in a lot of history in over a half century at the helm of Dooky Chase. Now in her '90s, she still cooks the New Orleans Creole standards that made fans of Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Charles and Barack Obama, to name a few. The restaurant, with its pressed linens and distinguished collection of African-American art, has long physically embodied the principle that African-Americans deserved nothing less than the best – a particularly powerful message during those years when the restaurant was one of the relative few where African-Americans were legally permitted to dine. Today, a cross section of the city's populace files in to partake of the groaning lunch buffet - and hopefully catch a kind word with Chase herself.